Seattle-based information storage supplier Qumulo laid off about 80 workers Wednesday, or roughly 19% of its workers, within the newest spherical of job cuts affecting tech firms.
In a memo despatched to workers and obtained by Startup, Qumulo CEO Invoice Richter cited financial situations and getting the corporate to profitability as causes for the cuts.
Tons of of tech firms are slashing workers amid inflation and the potential for a recession. Enterprise capitalists are advising startups to chop bills and prolong their money runways.
Different Seattle startups together with Esper, Convoy, and Keepe have laid off workers in current months, along with bigger firms comparable to Redfin and SAP.
In an interview with Startup on Wednesday, Richter stated Qumulo just isn’t seeing a slowdown in demand from prospects. However the firm is now working in a distinct macroeconomic surroundings, he stated.
“The 2 most essential issues are progress and profitability — not one or the opposite,” Richter stated.
Qumulo final raised capital in 2020 when it reeled in a $125 million Collection E spherical at a $1.2 billion valuation, making it one in every of a handful of Seattle “unicorns” to eclipse the $1 billion valuation mark.
The cloud file storage and administration firm helps firms handle unstructured information. There at the moment are greater than 200 billion recordsdata dealt with by Qumulo for purchasers comparable to Telus, College of Florida, and others.
The acceleration of cloud applied sciences in the course of the pandemic contributed to file progress in its enterprise, Richter informed us on the Startup Podcast final fall.
Qumulo had about 300 workers in the beginning of 2020, after which ramped up hiring, reaching a peak of 450 folks. However some progress expectations “didn’t sufficiently materialize,” Richter wrote within the memo, and extra headcount “added organizational complexity.”
“We should function a lean group, make investments the place there are clear and repeatable returns, and be sincere about what’s not paying off or sustainable,” Richter wrote within the memo.
There at the moment are about 350 workers on the firm following the job cuts, Richter stated.
Qumulo traders embody BlackRock, which led the Collection E spherical; Highland Capital Companions; Madrona Enterprise Group; Kleiner Perkins; and Amity Ventures. Complete funding up to now is $351 million.
Richter, additionally a enterprise associate at Madrona, joined Qumulo in 2016. He beforehand was an government at Isilon Methods, an information storage firm that offered to EMC for $2.25 billion in 2010.
Former Isilon workers Peter Godman, Neal Fachan, and Aaron Passey based Qumulo a decade in the past. Godman stepped down as CEO when Richter was employed, and left the corporate in 2018. Fachan stays as chief scientist. Passey left in 2016 and was a principal engineer at Dropbox from 2017 to 2021.
Qumulo in Could employed Kiran Bhageshpur as chief know-how officer. Bhageshpur was CEO and founding father of Igneous, which offered to Rubrik in 2020, and likewise beforehand labored at Isilon.